On Poison, Love, and Fire

don't drink another's poison

and don't pass it over the table

for someone else—

just common table manners.

love is the only antidote.

but you can’t give it.

and you can’t take it.

you only see you are the antidote.

mature duality is less venomous

than immature nonduality—

taste the ashes

before playing with fire.

A Child’s Garden of Light

Once upon a time there was a child of light, transported to two apparent lights not knowing they too were light.

For they had learned to think, and more, to think about themselves, and every thought was like a colored lens

filtering clear light into emotional complexions of those optics. But, of course, they still were light and loved the light

and taught the lamb of light that came to them to think like them, for that is what they thought was right,

and soon that guiltless light no more was pure unclouded lucid light but shaded in a singular and separate pattern,

divided and benighted—

until one sees the light.

Aum Shakespeare: "thou must now know farther”

from: The Tempest; Act I, Scene II

MIRANDA

…O, I have suffered

With those that I saw suffer: a brave vessel,

Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her,

Dash'd all to pieces. O, the cry did knock

Against my very heart. Poor souls, they perish'd.

Had I been any god of power, I would

Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere

It should the good ship so have swallow'd and

The fraughting souls within her.

PROSPERO

Be collected:

No more amazement: tell your piteous heart

There's no harm done.

MIRANDA

O, woe the day!

PROSPERO

No harm.

I have done nothing but in care of thee,

Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who

Art ignorant of what thou art, nought knowing

Of whence I am, nor that I am more better

Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,

And thy no greater father.

MIRANDA

More to know

Did never meddle with my thoughts.

PROSPERO

'Tis time

I should inform thee farther. Lend thy hand,

And pluck my magic garment from me. So:

(Lays down his mantle)           

Lie there, my art. Wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort.

The direful spectacle of the wreck, which touch'd

The very virtue of compassion in thee,

I have with such provision in mine art

So safely ordered that there is no soul--

No, not so much perdition as an hair

Betid to any creature in the vessel

Which thou heard'st cry, which thou saw'st sink. Sit down;

For thou must now know farther.

MIRANDA

You have often

Begun to tell me what I am, but stopp'd

And left me to a bootless inquisition,

Concluding 'Stay: not yet.'

PROSPERO

The hour's now come;

The very minute bids thee ope thine ear;

Obey and be attentive. Canst thou remember

A time before we came unto this cell?

The Waters of Bermuda

I had heard the talk about the waters of Bermuda and believed it. They were colored with the kiss of turquoise and clear like mountain springs.

But when the ship approached the eastern end, I saw the talk to be mere words and my belief a phantom of the operatic mind.

Oh sure, there is a turquoise hue in pools and places, but even turquoise isn't turquoise. It's just old French for Turkish,

and the colors range through Persian Blue, Black Spider Web, Dark Green Damale, and Yellow Ivory Tortoise,

as well as ten-thousand variations on that painter's theme. It's like the classic difference between religion and the truth,

thinking and experiential witnessing, rationale and love, the pointing finger and the bright full moon.

Here rise the waters of Bermuda, and yes, they are amazing.

Sea Legs

The ship was rolling in a Beaufort Scale of nine and I was in the bow when the center of our gravity went missing.

It took a week on land before I found it once again.

But meanwhile vertigo suggested that the world was in my mind and every movement I anticipated was met

by corresponding movement of some so-called object,

that there’s only this subjective space and gravity is magical illusion which without the waves are seen to be the sea

and all attachment is expelled like vomit.

Bermuda Illuminations

Between two massive igneous formations rests a turquoise cove with ocean waters warmed to a Bermuda summer glow.

Ten thousand years of blue incessant waves have undercut the old caldera stone to thunder crashing with each coral tidal lightning show.

I'm in the water with my thirty-something year old daughter and we're snorkeling and looking at the unknown world

beneath the surface of the sea. It's paradise revisited for me.

That's when I saw the angel fish, or what I like to call an angel fish, although a little later on I'm told it's just an everyday Bermuda sea chub.

You see they change their colors like a mood ring, silver being their default, and black their warlike tint.

But white is their harmonious and peaceable embodiment.

Amazing, like an underwater Prospero, I am conjuring a show that never happens, although I know this spontaneity is looking

through this looking glass and seeing far into the past when my Miranda came to being helping with my seeing,

like this angel fish of my imagination, focusing a world of waves into a sea of self-awareness.

Bermuda is the truth and even someone sixty-something is illuminated in its timeless youth.

Clifton of St. George

There’s a black man in Bermuda who asks each tourist he encounters this specific question:

how old should someone be before allowing them to drink?

There’s a tourist in Bermuda who answers if they’re old enough to die.

There’s a black man in Bermuda who's asked if he remembers being born and answers he recalls that original swimming.

There's a tourist in Bermuda who knows the only knowledge is I am, yet in the deeper water asks his ginger beer and black Bermuda rum:

but who am I?

Formalism

I was nurtured on the teat of sweet belief

creating what I call myself. Unique. Good grief!

My personality is like an onion made

from all these other second-hand beliefs conveyed

to memory and accepted as a god’s own truth.

And so I fade from infancy to bitter youth.

But ask myself this question most see most naive:

do I remember being born? I can’t conceive

a moment never being. That is what I am.

The rest is just some evolutionary scam

the absolute unknown intends so I may know

I am the absolute unknown. No pain, no rhyme.

The Last Thing

Alone again but more alone than ever I have been since ever I have been me.

Most would say I wasted all my talents on obsessions, circumventions, and preoccupations.

So I’ll repeat my psychological evaluation here: my father never introduced me to the world; my mother was completely fearful of it.

This left me with one simple task while in and of this world: to tread upon the tiger's tail without alerting it to my inquiring presence.

I could write this story now as if this character possessed a choice in plot, development, or setting. But I didn't.

So let me end this introduction with my lifelong findings: there’s no world to introduce except a false one. And fear is why the world itself is false.

The world will never tell you this because it doesn't know it. And the ones who really know it know there's nothing to be told. I’d listen to them.

Oh to be sure, there are religions that will sell the sea to every wave within this ocean but religions are the world’s own fears personified and organized to hide them in some other hell.

And please do not misunderstand me. I'm still going further. The only reason why I'm writing is this entropy of poetry. This form enjoys the rhyme of dancing with the beauty of the truth it knows to date.

First, there’s only love. And if we listened to the Beatles back in nineteen-sixty-seven, we'd already know this. Then again, if John and Paul were listening, they'd never write the song, or I, of course, this poem.

Love is what we are without the need for wanting love or making love or needing to be loved and once this faith in love is truly followed, there’s no ‘we’ or 'me' remaining. Jesus Christ, just listen to his message.

Last, the only thing you need to know is there is absolutely nothing to be known. In fact, the thinking that there's something to be known is why one never knows that great unknown. The Cloud Unknowing says: unknow and know your—no, that—yes, my—unknown.

I'll end with just this other way if love is not the hard direction wired within your brain. Deconstruct the world as now you see it: tread upon the tiger's tail without alerting it to your inquiring presence.

Sometimes I'll talk to me so I will listen to myself. Like a rolling stone.

The Ballad of Long Division

In the land of long division

our denominator is the king.

And in the world of yin and yang

she may be queen. Or anything.

In the land of long division

war is our default position setting.

War may be defined as worldwide

or a little bit upsetting.

In the land of long division

answers always end with more divisions.

Taking sides will always lead

to new improved sky-high collisions.

In the land of long division

genuine nonviolence is the hero.

Long division ends when one

denominator sets to zero.